Meager August Jobs Growth Obscures A Disastrous Employment Picture

Employment: Another month of high expectations for jobs, another month of deep disappointment. How long does this lackluster performance have to go on before we recognize its true cause?

Some economists and pundits viewed the 169,000 new jobs created in August as confirmation of a continuing modest rebound in job growth that's now underway.

They're wrong. In fact, the data are far worse than they appear. Not only did the actual number of jobs come up short, but June and July totals were revised down by 74,000. Recovery summer, anyone?

Other data in the jobs report show similar weakness:

 Some 90.5 million Americans are now out of the labor force, with almost a third of a million leaving in July alone and nearly 10 million workers departing since Obama took office. Meanwhile, 115,000 fewer Americans were employed in August than in July.

 The "good news" of a dip in unemployment from 7.4% in July to 7.3% in August turns out to be a mirage. It was due to a decline of 312,000 in the workforce. Without that, joblessness would have risen to 7.5%.

 Add the number of unemployed to part-timers who want full-time work and those who have given up looking, then the real unemployment rate is 13.7%.

 At 63.2%, the labor force participation rate is now at the lowest since 1978. And the 69.5% for men is an all-time low.

 Unemployment among blacks, Obama's most loyal supporters, rose to 13% from 12.6%.

 Job growth over the last six months has averaged 160,000 a month. At this rate, it'll take until mid-2024 to return to 2007's pre-recession level.

We've heard all the excuses.

Republicans — who controlled nothing for the first two years of Obama's presidency and just one branch of the legislature ever since — are somehow to blame.

Or the minuscule cuts in the budget "sequester" killed growth by slashing government spending.

Or the Fed's plan to "taper" its quantitative easing program from buying $85 billion a month in federal debt to just $65 billion or so is the villain.

Or "Wall Street bankers" just refuse to lend.

You get the idea. It's always somebody or something else to blame — never the foolish, extreme policies of President Obama and his Democrat allies in Congress, who have systematically set about dismantling what was once the world's most dynamic growth engine.

Americans bought into the idea that President Obama was a victim of extraordinary circumstances, not of his own incompetence. He won a second term.

They're now finding out in a variety of areas — the economy, health care, foreign affairs, race relations, to name just a few — how very wrong they were.

What ails this economy is no secret. Higher tax rates on entrepreneurs, ObamaCare, a regulatory siege, soaring government debt and record spending have all hurt.

Our vibrant economy could be restored if we addressed those problems, one by one. But that can only happen if Americans demand an end to the status quo.

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